Advertisement

August 13, 2008

What is NGO Accountability?

Long ago, I used to have this vision of making a worldwide civic
movement called by one simple word: "Accountability".

I thought this
over-arching concept would make links among movements that had become
very separate, bureaucratized, and even hostile to one another, whether concerned with human
rights, democracy, social justice, environment or natural resources.

All the basic civil rights of freedom of expression and freedom of
assembly would naturally be the basis for such a movement, that would
not have to play the game of never taking a political position (when in
fact it was taking them all the time) because it would not be strictly
mandated by law in one country or morality contingent on this or that religion, but based on
a kind of civic responsibility that is hard to capture sometimes by
literal references to rights or morals. In this vision I had,
Accountability would never fund-raise or collect donations and spend money, and thus have no need to become
mired in financial, tax, and registration problems. It would try to frame the issues, and take action where needed.

I thought Accountability was a great idea, because you could pick as
much or as little of it as you were prepared to handle at your level --
if you could call entire nations to account on their torture overseas
or at home with media access and skilled lawyers and doctors, and you would
of course seek resources to accomplish this, but as an independent entity subscribing to the overall principles of
Accountability, and using this network like you would use Wikipedia or Facebook to find information and connections. If all you could do was to get your arbitrary landlord
in your neighbourhood to be fair to the poor, then you'd do that much -- with help from whatever you took from Accountability -- with whatever people gave.
You could enter the stream at any level, and swim as deep or as long as
you wished -- or merely remain a well-wisher on the banks.

Of course,
this dream was from a different era, and I suppose is typical of people from the
1960s or 1970s who look for globalistic solutions. It's hardly
practical, but I still think it's a useful idea to look for ideals to
create social movements that develop a sturdy capacity to address real
social and political problems that do not yield so readily to hortatory
references to rights or morals. You want a teenager not to seek an
abortion and you exhort her not to, and yet, what was your plan for
funding the raising of this child? You wanted a woman to leave her
abusive husband and invoke women's rights to seek an order of
protection, but what was your plan to support her now that she lost her
sole source of income, her spouse? The ways to seek accountability in
these situations aren't so instantly clear, our role as moralizers or rights defenders are more clear than our remedies, but it seems to me that you
could begin to organize around certain principles -- accepting
responsiblity, paying as you go, helping the poor, volunteering your
time -- ingredients that are needed in any NGO, but aren't really
themselves so studied as methods to avoid what happens in so many poor
countries, especially those ravaged by war -- taking up arms, using
violence, stealing, pillaging, rape as a way of life.

Sergei Kovalev used to tell me that you could actually get a situation
where a state would obey all the treaties it had signed and yet there'd
still be something missing, I suppose it was liberal democracy or free enterprise, which
is hard to deliver as "rights". By the same token, we see all around us
in America the delivery of the framework of liberal democracy and free enterprise,
and yet diminished lives, people without health insurance or secure
housing, awful public schools...

Meanwhile, as I had to put aside this dream for other more practical
projects, the discourse around "NGO Accountability" went on apace, and
enjoyed a surge of activity from around 2003-2006, before dying down
somewhat. I'll say right off the bat that civil society is not made up
of NGOs alone, and that fact seems often forgotten when NGOs with UN
status go around referring to themselves as Civil Society in capital
letters ("société civile -- c'est moi" might be their slogan). NGOs
just happen to be a form in which a lot of us interested in human
rights or social justice can take part in civic action, especially at
the UN or OSCE. It's also important to remember that to enjoy the
internationally-recognized right to freedom of association, a group
does not
have to be registered by a government; this fact is often lost on those
zealous to bind "accountability" to a state-designed or government-approved regimen for civic
action.

As I begin to re-explore these issues of "NGO Accountability" again, I find some interesting developments:

o I'm not aware of any major human rights organization that has built any sort of "accountability" regime or tools into its activities or mandate, the way businesses are now all supposed to have "social responsibility" incorporated into their mission -- although a number of groups have engaged in accountability reviews or signed statements -- but I bet I'm not sufficiently informed on this.

o American Enterprise Institute, which once started an "NGO Watch" for some reason, retired the concept as such, and now the former links lead to a site called "Global Governance," which is more about public demand for accountability of international institutions like the UN rather than a focus on NGOs per say. There are some interesting resource pages that remain from this project as originally conceived; Ken Anderson, a lawyer and expert on international law, formerly of Human Rights Watch and now a critic of the human rights movement, has an interesting paper on the distinction between "liberal internationalism" and "democratic sovereignty" as real-world choices that movements have to make.

o AEI's seizure of this issue naturally spawned a backlash of those concerned that it was merely a right-wing cover to use ties with the Bush Administration to club leftwing political opponents and to try to challenge the tax status of some NGOs whose views were disliked or seen as "too political"; Naomi Klein even said AEI "marginalizes and criminalizes more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to democracy".

o The Ford Foundation appeared to take a number of steps to mitigate the scandals that emerged with the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, where charges were made that this American philanthrophy had funded Palestinian hate groups who demonized Israel. Some groups were then defunded, new language was developed for grant contracts, and that appeared to head off a threatened Congressional inquiry, but this prompted concern in such quarters as The Nation that government intrusion on political grounds, a la McCarthyism, was going to place a chill over critical groups working on controversial issues and threaten necessary work, i.e. the defense by the ACLU of the civil rights of persons charged with terrorism against the U.S. Since then, there has been an active campaign to get Ford to remove language from their grant letters telling grantees that they must refrain from promoting bigotry, terrorism, or calling for the destruction of any state.

o Lisa Jordan of the Ford Foundation has published a book on NGO accountability, although it appears to be more about how first-world NGOs should behave in the third world responsibly, rather than addressing the kinds of issues of ideologies and human rights raised by Durban.

o NGO Monitor, an organization that took up the issue of Durban and the hate groups that destroyed the NGO Forum and cast a pall over the conference, and which also monitors how leading human rights groups report on the Israel-Palestine conflict, is still going strong and having an impact on mass media with its findings.

I'll never forget a story told by a New York labour leader in the 1980s, Sam, who visited the Soviet Union and asked the official Soviet Peace Committee about the persecution of independent peace activists. He was told not to worry about them by Soviet officials who said that the Soviet Peace Committee had 80 million members -- virtually every adult in the USSR. What were 8 people in this little dinky group compared to such a "mass movement"? Their peace efforts, even if well-intentioned, were not needed. "Well," said Sam. "Why not 80 million...plus 8?"

Still, I think the subject shouldn't die. NGOs need to keep calling governments to account as well as non-state actors. The media and the general public have a right to call NGOs to account, to live up to their charters. Governmental regulatory frameworks are needed, but should not be allowed to suppress free speech and association. Just as journalism is best self-regulated by professional media societies rather than by restrictive laws, so NGO advocacy and activity should be self-regulated. It shouldn't take a government hearing or regulation or even a grant letter to keep an NGO from calling for the destruction of a state, although such grant requirements are a good thing and should be encouraged. It should have been part of an NGO ethic of non-violence from the onset.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Check out http://quality.bond.org.uk too. BOND's the UK umbrella body for NGOs (like Interaction in the US). This is the wiki of their Quality Group. The word used might be 'quality', but it picks up the debate about accountability. There's a huge amount of current material here. In particular, you might be interested to have a look at HAP, the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership, which is very much alive and kicking and growing in 2008.